Emergency Room Series : Substance Abuse

The ER has been very congested these days. 

There's a heavy workload on staffs. I've now become a pro in holding my bladder and I might as well not eat for hours but just take energy drinks. That's the life of the ER team. Time is an enemy of the ER unit. If You waste time, people die. And I so hate having to wrap dead people! 

A lot of people are falling very ill these days, most especially children. May God help us.

One of the easy places to know the trending things that are killing people is the ER....and I heard of one today.

You see, I've shared a lot of stories about people who abuse and mix harmful substances to drink so as to get high, but I think those ones are child's play compared to this.


People tend not to cherish what they have till they lose it. Not everyone is privileged to be healthy and it hurts when healthy people do harmful things to themselves because they want to feel 'good' or 'among'.


I saw a guy brought in to the ER, he was already foaming from his mouth and unconscious but breathing 

The details to what happened to him was sketchy. He was found unconscious in his apartment when a neighbor came to see him to borrow something , it was the Neighbor That raised an alarm and people helped to bring him to the hospital. A woman among them claimed she saw him entering his apartment with his friends the previous night. She said she saw them smoking on the balcony and after a while, they left but he didn't see them off. I wonder where she was and how long she stood there to see all that. 

There was a very strong smell of alcohol in his breath. 

We took it as a case of alcohol intoxication and attempted homicide.
His bp was extremely low and he was having short irregular breaths and his heart beat was low too

He was rushed with iv fluids to reduce the toxicity. He was suctioned severely because he kept drooling saliva. He was placed on oxygen and had injections to reverse reactions. His pupils were not even sensitive to light and that's a dangerous sign. He began to drool bloody saliva too. It didn't look like a case of alcohol intoxication again. We knew the police had to be involved because the guy lived alone. 

A neighbor knew a police friend who he called, the police guy came around to see the patient and they both went to his apartment to lock it. A doctor told the neighbor to take a picture of whatever drink or substance they found there so the doctors could see and know what they were dealing it. Despite the IV fluids he was having, he made very little urine which meant his kidney was getting damaged. He had no phone on him so we couldn't get his relatives. 

He had an ultrasound done and his blood was taken for series of tests. The neighbors were kind enough to donate some money for him. 

When the neighbor who followed the policeman came, he brought the guy's phone along. It was an iPhone so his thumb was used to open it and a neighbor called his dad. I was thinking his friends would have taken the phone away and they wouldn't find it. The neighbor took a video of the living room and what was found there was breathtaking. I peeped to see it(lol!). It looked like they were running a drug cartel there. There was a keg of methylated spirit, like the one used in hospital theatres, bottles of cough syrup, Diet Cokes, injection needles and bottles. Plastic bags that contained weed, cigarettes and some money. They are all spread out on a small fancy mat. 

It appears they were having the time of their lives when the patient suddenly felt weak or slumped and they didn't know what to do so they ran away, I can't say. Do people now drink methylated spirit? 

Wow!

 Thats like 95% pure ethanol! You only take things like that for suicide! Did the patient plan to die? Did his friends poison him with overdose? What cocktail of deadly mixture did he take? Is he a known drug addict? Those were the questions that needed answers. 

Anyways, he's still in the ER, on oxygen, being suctioned and rehydrated. They medical team is thinking of placing him on ventilator because his breathing is very shallow which means his respiratory muscles are getting weak. There's a CPR cart beside him, incase his heart stopped. His oxygen level is still low despite being on oxygen, this could affect his brain and memory if he finally wakes up. 

We are expecting his dad. 

I hope his friends come around if they are really his friends. They would be scared to, but I'm sure they would eventually be found. 

I can't over-emphasize the effects of drug abuse. It's better not to even start at all. There is no single benefit of taking drugs. It only has nasty and life-threatening side effects. 

I know people who say they take it to forget their worries. Won't the worries remain there and stare back at you when the effect of the drugs fade away?. Hard Drugs aren't cool. Really!!!

*Please update us on what happens to this guys so that any addict reading this will know how it ends..thank you